Struggle builds over Massachusetts Gov. Healey’s proposal to shut state-owned hospitals

Gov. Maura Healey’s proposed crackdown on state-owned hospitals continues to face scathing opposition, with stakeholders throughout Cape Cod set to voice issues over a deliberate closure of a psychological well being facility serving the area.

The Barnstable County Board of Regional Commissioners is scheduled to satisfy Wednesday morning to debate and vote on sending a letter to the governor to assist funding the Pocasset Psychological Health Heart.

That might be adopted by a Barnstable County Meeting of Delegates assembly later Wednesday. Stakeholders and affected households will convene to “discuss the significant negative impact a closure would have and urge the regional government to voice its opposition.”

Healey has proposed closing Pocasset Psychological Health Heart, a 16-bed psychiatric hospital in Bourne, as a part of her $62 billion funds request for the following fiscal 12 months — a 7.4% improve over present spending that the governor has referred to as “balanced” and “fiscally responsible.”

As staffers, sufferers and different affected stakeholders name on Healey to maintain Pappas Rehabilitation Hospital for Youngsters open in Canton, these at Pocasset and throughout the Cape demand the identical from the governor for his or her middle.

Barnstable County Sheriff Donna D. Buckley wrote a letter to Healey final Friday, highlighting her “vehement opposition” to the deliberate closure of Pocasset and the governor’s proposal to scale back the variety of case managers on the state Division of Psychological Health from 340 to 170.

Pocasset is a 16-bed inpatient acute psychological well being stabilization middle that gives short-term remedy to its sufferers who’re not less than 19 years previous. In response to the state Govt Workplace of Health and Human Companies, some 56 workers work on the facility.

Buckley wrote that she sees the “devastating generational consequences of the closure of in-patient mental health hospitals over the last 40 years” day by day. Hospital emergency rooms and jails have change into “de-facto mental health treatment providers” with out funding in “community-based” sources, she wrote.

“If Pocasset is closed,” Buckley wrote, “access to care becomes even more difficult, resulting in more mental health challenges being left untreated and more people entering a downward spiral into the criminal justice system.”

Buckley additionally highlighted how the Barnstable County Correctional Facility works “hand-in-hand” with state psychological well being case managers “in treating and re-integrating our incarcerated individual population.” Roughly 69% of the ability’s residents are “prescribed at least one psychiatric medication,” she wrote.

“Incarcerated individuals receive both mental and behavioral health care from our in-house medical department,” she wrote. “Unless these services can be sustained post-release, their recovery will not last. They will once again commit crimes and once again put the public at risk.”

The Healey administration has mentioned the governor is reconsidering her proposal to shut Pappas, a 60-bed rehab hospital serving 36 sufferers in Canton, and transfer companies to Western Massachusetts Hospital, over 100 miles away, in Westfield.

Pappas’ sufferers vary in age from 7 to 22 and have bodily and cognitive disabilities, in addition to persistent and medically advanced situations requiring hospital-level care.

The Healey administration has emphasised how legislative approval will not be wanted for the hospitals to be consolidated, a transfer that officers have projected would save the state roughly $31 million. At the least 281 state jobs could be liable to being eradicated.

A Healey spokesperson didn’t instantly reply to a Herald request for remark Tuesday on whether or not the governor can also be reconsidering her proposal to shut Pocasset.

“I think of it as a redirecting of services, of care,” Healey mentioned when she unveiled her funds request final month. “In one place, we have a low utilization rate, only 16 beds. In another place, we have about 39 individuals housed, and a number of them — the majority of them — are over the age of 21, so looking at some other options, other facilities, places, where maybe it makes more sense in terms of consolidation of care or the right kind of care for those individuals.”

Any adjustments would go into impact after July 1 and state officers would meet and discount with unions beforehand, in response to a message that Health and Human Companies Labor Relations Director Ann Loone circulated with Pocasset staffers.